Psalms 129:2-3
“Many a time they have afflicted me from my youth;
Yet they have not prevailed against me.
The plowers plowed on my back;
They made their furrows long.”
The psalmist describes himself in a most vivid and horrifying manner. He states that his condition is as though the beasts of burden have veered off course and turned the plow back on the farmer. I do not know much about farming but I can imagine that to be an extremely painful experience. The cause of this dilemma was not wrong doing on the part of the author but rather he was being mistreated because of his association. We might say he was guilty by association. Those who were coming down hard upon him were doing so because they were angry at God or at the demands that His law placed upon them. This is a very common occurrence. Jesus told His followers they should expect to be mistreated simply because they have elected to follow Christ and bear His name.
John 15:20
Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.
One of the great challenges for the child of God is how to combat the retaliation we experience because we follow Christ. It is tempting for us to view those who oppose Christ as the enemy. Perhaps a better way is to see them as the mission field. In the early years of the church, believers faced intense opposition much of which was being driven by a man named Saul. He seemed to most as the enemy, but Jesus had a different viewpoint. He saw what Saul would become if he encountered the gospel message. While many were hiding from Saul’s threats, Jesus was pursuing Saul. It was an encounter with the risen Savior that changed Saul and brought salvation to countless others.
If you feel as though the plow is on your back because you love, follow and share Christ with others, keep in mind that the opposition is actually aimed at Jesus and through your faithfulness we might all see another Saul get saved.
Pastor Jim
Questions for Psalm 129
- In the moment we sometimes feel defeated but in the bigger picture God shows His righteousness. How can keep challenges of our lives in perspective?
- Verse 8 is a great memory verse…….bless you in the name of the Lord!
The Psalmist is describing a scenario common to all of us. There are times, when the hand life deals us is difficult to cope with; sleep is affected, and our minds are tormented. There are many terms that describe this condition, but perhaps the most common is worry. One dictionary defines worry as, “to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; to fret.” I think that is a pretty apt description of worrying; to torment yourself. When we lay in bed unable to sleep, or rise up to pace the floor, filling our minds with what-ifs and worse case scenarios, we are really tormenting ourselves. It is as if we are waterboarding ourselves, and wondering why we are suffering so greatly. The question is not whether we will face things that fill us with dread, concern and anxiety, the question is how we will react. What is the proper response for the child of God when he is faced with things bigger than himself?
4,000 years ago Abraham was instructed to take his son to Mount Zion and offer him to the Lord. 2,800 years ago David purchased the threshing floor of Ornan on top of Mount Zion so his son Solomon could erect a permanent house for the Ark and a place for Israel to worship. 2,000 years on that same mountain the son of God was sacrificed for the sins of all mankind as a means of providing salvation for anyone who would humble themselves and call upon the name of the Lord. And today countless people from all over the world make pilgrimages to mount Zion to reflect upon these events and so many more. Millions of visitors, thousands of storms, hundreds of wars and mount Zion has yet to be moved.
The Psalmist compares the way he looks to the Lord, to the way a servant looks to a master. If we are going to understand the comparison, we need to consider how a servant would look to a master. It seems to me, one word would describe it best. A servant looks to his master obediently. The role of the servant is to do the will of the master, and in order to do that, he must look to the master for instruction and respond with obedience. The servant does not have the right to argue with the master, nor the time to complain about how unfair his task, in light of what the other servants are doing. The servant obeys.
The devil is crafty and a master of deception. Paul referred to him as an angel of light, because of his ability to disguise himself in order to fool the Christian.
It is not always the longest, or even the most creative works, that become the most well known. I am not a poet, and cannot speak to the artistic side of things, but I doubt whether any poem is as well known as “Roses are red and violets are blue…” Sometimes, the simplicity of things is exactly what is most needed. In a songbook filled with some of the most elaborate and beautiful expressions of praise, we find a simple song, consisting of only two short verses. It is the brevity of this song that magnifies its content. We find the Psalmist emphasizing two things that make God worthy of the praise of all the nations. He states, God is kind, and His word is true.
This psalm opens with a declaration of love for the Lord because He hears us when we cry. As the psalm unfolds we learn that the writer was facing a very difficult season where the pains of death were surrounding him. These may have been physical pains from illness or injury or emotional pains caused by the loss of a loved one. Whatever the case his trial turned to triumph when he called upon the Lord.
I remember being in a cultural anthropology class in college, when the professor said, “the Bible says man was created in the image of God, but I believe God was created in the image of man.” While I totally disagree with his rejection of Biblical truth, I do agree, that man has been creating gods in his image since the beginning of time. We like to pretend we are a more evolved and sophisticated race than our ancestors, but the reality is, mankind has not changed. We are still creating gods in our image. Whenever we pick and choose verses we like, and reject the ones that make us uncomfortable, we are creating God in our own image. The Psalmist speaks of the folly of that, when he declares;
A few years ago my wife and I were window shopping at an outdoor mall in southern California when we stumbled onto a crowd of people huddled around a large telescope. We decided to stand in line and see what they were looking at. When our turn came to look through the view finder we were stunned. From the courtyard of the mall we were able to see the rings around Saturn. We took advantage of the moment and allowed the young man who owned the telescope to point out distant stars and even a distant galaxy. Technology has provided us with things that were unthinkable during most of human history, and there in the mall we were able to observe the heavens. I was struck both by the majesty of the heavens and by the advances of science that would allow the casual shopper a glimpse into the heavens. But I did realize that this was only possible because of the highest reaches of human development. Centuries of studying the stars had come together at that moment to provide a telescope that could view the heavens.
Jim Gallagher 